Lesson Learnt and Good Day Out

What does one thing have to do with the other you may ask. Well we made a mistake, learnt a lesson and had a day out into the bargain.
Last week we had a phone call from a WWOOFer (willing worker on organic farms) with a dog wanting to know could she come and wwoof. Was the dog well behaved-Yes; Did she chase chickens, ducks, geese or guinea pigs- Oh no she wouldn't do anything like that! So against my better judgement we allowed her to come with the proviso that she would have to go if it didn't work out. So the dog was undisciplined, did chase all of above mentioned animals growled and barked at me and Mark every time we walked out the door and to top it off she actually took a bite at our 4yr old grand daughter, She just had to go. But here was the biggest dilemma, she had not transport and dogs aren't allowed on public transport. our WWOOFer found a host that would take her and the dog but 40mins away in Newcastle. Would we please drop everything and take her! I was really cranky by this time. I had to turn it around for my own well being otherwise it would eat me up, so we decided to make an outing of it . We put the bikes on the back of the ute, packed a picnic lunch,dropped said WWOOFer and dog off , drove to a bike track and set off.

The track is along a disused railway line, in places you can still see some of the old track

 Me in front of a tunnel

inside the tunnel- that's Mark up a head

Stopped for lunch. There are picnic tables and seats all along the track

A lizard came out to sun itself on the concrete bridge. It was a really warm spring sort of day.

Mark and I bought our bikes last year for $40 each from an Op Shop, after a decision to run a Bike Awareness day with Transition Towns. And we have tried to ride regularly ever since. I am much stronger now and can ride quite long distances -23klms- . The idea is to reduce our use of the car by riding the bike but we also enjoy recreational rides as well. Usually we take the bikes on the train if we have a fair distance to travel.Any way the lesson we learnt was to stick to our rules and not take wwoofer's with dogs, and we did have a great day!
This evening we are running the first of our "Movies That Matter" here at the farm. We will show a movie once a month. Tonight we are showing anima mundi a new movie sensation sweeping permaculture and Transition Town circles.